White Papers

Manned and unmanned land, air, and sea platform local area network (LAN) security has been overlooked for many years. However, because of increasingly sinister, competent, and faster threats that are harder to detect, the time has come to revisit how we protect these critical platforms. Sensitive satellite and radio communications must be secured, both incoming and outgoing, with readily available, up-to-date, router firewall technology.

There is a deadlock scenario which is inherent to systems containing a PCI/VME interface. The PCI specification allows for and defines devices called bridges. A bridge could be a
host bridge which interfaces a host CPU to the system PCI bus. Another type of bridge is the PCI-to-PCI bridge which bridges two different PCI buses.

Some aircraft designers and systems integrators already design computers in-house. For these companies, the question must be asked, just because you can, should you? Anything that distracts you from your core competencies could result in project overruns, delays or failure.

One of the aspects of defense programs that is different is their longevity. That has significant implications for the technology that’s at their heart. Here, we look at the options available to maximize a platform’s viability well into the future.

Solutions that allow aircraft crews to navigate in DVE are a critical need and a key area of interest for military and commercial applications. This whitepaper examines common DVE challenges and some promising solutions.

This white paper discusses well-developed strategies to help you evaluate and strengthen your plan for long-term viability of programs and systems that includes embedded single board computers.

Maximizing system reliability in military embedded computing is an imperative. Here, we describe the Health Toolkit, the first commercial solution designed to provide the insight that can support that goal.

Partial Reconfiguration allows FPGAs to dynamically change modules without disrupting other parts of the design. This white paper describes the special considerations throughout the design process when using the new Xilinx RFSoC technology.

Embedded, many-core, AI-capable rugged supercomputing is now ready for defense applications, in a rugged, deployable form factor. This white paper describes how the GVC1001 fulfills the requirements.

In a rapidly changing technology environment, developers of advanced electronic warfare solutions face a sometimes bewildering array of choices. It’s not just about RF performance, though. Here, we describe some of the options and trade-offs.

The pressure to deliver leading edge electronic warfare solutions in the shortest possible time has never been greater. Increasingly, that means COTS solutions – more readily available and at lower cost than in-house development. Here, we look at some options.

Engineers using avionics data bus interfaces and data loaders are facing a growing problem: the demise of the PCMCIA and ExpressCard interfaces, and the inadequacy of USB as an alternative. There is, however, a way forward.

This white paper looks at how hypersonic flight will place radical new demands on the embedded computing systems on which they will rely – in terms of not only new levels of performance, but also of new levels of ruggedness.

For MIMO radar, SIGINT, and EW applications, precise channel synchronization within several degrees is essential, but can take months of development to achieve. Our guide details an approach to speeding the synchronization of multiple Gigasample JESD204B ADCs, an auto-calibration scheme, an example case study, and experimental results.

The SBC347D 3U VPX single board computer can operate at full performance even at temperatures as high as 75°C. Here, Brian Hoden, Principle Mechanical Engineer, explains the cooling technology that makes this possible.

Radar and EW applications are demanding more performance but with lower SWaP. Haydn Nelson, Director of Product Management, RF and DSP, describes the available technologies.

In this white paper, Kevin Moran, who is Director, Business Development, Autonomy looks at the technologies that are bringing truly autonomous vehicles a reality.

The beauty of OpenCL is that it provides a programming language that spans GPU, DSP, FPGA as well as traditional CPUs. David Tetley, Principal Software Engineer, explains.

Here, Larry Schaffer, Director of Business Development and Haydn Nelson, Director of Product Management, RF and DSP review the sources of latency, and how to minimize it.

Custom systems can be as available and cost-effective as off-the-shelf solutions.

With new threats constantly emerging, how can advanced switch management software help defend networks against cyber attack? David Herbert, Lead Software Engineer, provides the answers.

Efforts to replicate the human ability to classify objects have historically been largely academic, lab-bound and isolated; each employs one chosen algorithm, is often coded, tuned and operated on the same platform; and does not apply continuous learning or evolution. In the world of the Industrial Internet, there is an opportunity to have many different machines observing the physical world through a variety of sensors and applying a “collective learning”, such that the experience of the individual machine contributes to the learning of the whole.

VME has been at the heart of rugged embedded computing for over 30 years. Alternative architectures have come along – but VME is still thriving. And: there are good reasons why VME will continue to thrive – as this white paper explains.

A managed Ethernet switch can offer significant advantages over an unmanaged switch in terms of flexibility, availability and security. However: organizations will often compromise on these benefits in favor of the faster start-up times offered by an unmanaged switch. Now, work undertaken by the network engineering team at Abaco Systems means that compromise may no longer be necessary: it is possible to have the best of both worlds.

You can address the ever-evolving processing requirements for ISR, but only if you choose the right tool for the job. Learn how to leverage FPGAs to meet the often conflicting requirements ISR applications place on embedded systems.

The availability of appropriate hardware can be a gating factor in the development of high performance, SWaP-constrained applications. However, this white paper describes an approach that can deliver a compelling process.

The Electronic Warfare operating environment is unique because a system latency difference measured in nanoseconds can mean the difference between mission success or failure. This paper describes how COTS technologies are pushing, the frontiers of the possible in EW.

Our product development is strongly guided by support for industry initiatives such as VICTORY and FACE. This white paper describes the UK’s Generic Vehicle Architecture which is also designed to improve interoperability and scalability while minimizing cost.

Open architectures enable our industry to benefit from a broad range of hardware and software choices – this white paper describes, they also provide a high degree of certainty that choices made today will provide maximum program longevity.

When the pressure is on to get programs fielded in the minimum time, developers use every trick available to shorten the time to application completion. Here, we describe one such trick: using intuitive graphics instead of impenetrable text.

Autonomous mobile platforms – whether automobiles or UAVs – need complex, sophisticated algorithms, and the computing power to deliver their output in near real-time. This white paper describes some of the approaches that have been taken.

Commercial supercomputing and server farms have much to offer high performance embedded computing (HPEC) applications not only in terms of hardware, but also in terms of software. The capabilities available to embedded developers are described in this paper.

Abaco’s flexible, secure, high performance switch management environment – and because we created it, we understand it in depth – and can modify it to suit unque customer needs. Here, we describe some of the problems we have solved.